Showing papers on "Government published in 1968"

The policy-making process

Abstract: I. INTRODUCTION. 1. Challenges Facing Policy Making. 2. The Limits of Analysis. 3. Incrementalism and the Intelligence of Democracy. II. CONVENTIONAL GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS. 4. The Imprecision of Voting. 5. Elected Functionaries. 6. Bureaucracy. 7. Interest Groups in Policy Making. III. BROADER INFLUENCES ON POLICY MAKING. 8. The Privileged Position of Business. 9. Political Inequality. 10. Impaired Inquiry. IV. IMPROVING POLICY MAKING. 11. Making the Most of Analysis. 12. More Democracy?

Political Socialization and the High School Civics Curriculum in the United States

Abstract: Attempts to map the political development of individuals inevitably become involved with the relative contribution of different socialization agencies throughout the life cycle. Research has focused to a large extent on the family and to a much lesser degree on other agents such as the educational system. At the secondary school level very little has been done to examine systematically the selected aspects of the total school environment. To gain some insight into the role of the formal school environment, this paper will explore the relationship between the civics curriculum and political attitudes and behavior in American high schools. A number of studies, recently fortified by data from Gabriel Almond and Sidney's Verba's five-nation study, stress the crucial role played by formal education in the political socialization process. [None of the other variables] compares with the educational variable in the extent to which it seems to determine political attitudes. The uneducated man or the man with limited education is a different political actor from the man who has achieved a high level of education.1 Such conclusions would not have greatly surprised the founders of the American republic, for they stressed the importance of education to the success of democratic and republican government. Starting from its early days the educational system incorporated civic training. Textbooks exposing threats to the new republic were being used in American schools by the 1790's. By 1915, the term “civics” became associated with high school courses which emphasized the study of political institutions and citizenship training.2

Housing Priorities, Settlement Patterns, and Urban Development in Modernizing Countries

Abstract: Attempts to plan the development of cities in modernizing countries and to improve housing standards are often confounded by the autonomous action of low-income squatters and clandestine developers. In the most rapidly urbanizing areas, squatter developers dominate contemporary urban growth, reducing the planners' sphere of influence to those areas developed by wealthier minorities and public institutions. This historically unprecedented, politically and economically dangerous, loss of control over major parts of urban growth can be interpreted as the result of conflicts between government programs and the demands of the people. Until realignment of institutional norms and action is accomplished, the major resource for infrastructure development, the collective will and savings of the common people, cannot be coordinated with government plans and policies. A preliminary model of the settlement process in transitional countries is presented here to illustrate the dynamics of this problem.

A Simple Macroeconomic Model with a Government Budget Restraint

Abstract: In choosing a mix of monetary and fiscal policies, government authorities (including the central bank) are bound by a government budget restraint. This restraint is less severe than a private individual's or firm's restraint because government authorities can issue fiat money. Nevertheless, the government budget restraint is important. It requires that in each period total government expenditure (transfer payments plus purchases of goods and services) must be equal to the total flow of financing from all sources (including printing money). This means there is a constraint upon the government's freedom to choose arbitrary values of such policy variables as expenditures, taxes, net amount of borrowing from the private sector, and net amount of new money issued. For example, if a government has already decided upon its expenditures, taxes, borrowing, and all other means of finance besides printing money, then it has no further choice about how much money to issue: The net amount issued must be just enough so that the total of flows of financing is equal to expenditure. It is the purpose of this paper to introduce the government budget restraint into a very simple theoretical static macroeconomic model of aggregate demand with a rigid price level, and to show how the analysis of macroeconomic policies is affected by the budget restraint.1 To summarize: the results indicate that the multiplier effect of a change in government purchases cannot be defined until it is decided how to finance the purchases, and the value of the multiplier given by the generally * The work underlying this paper was done partly at the University of Essex and partly supported by a National Science Foundation grant to the John Hopkins University. I am indebted for helpful comments to G. C. Archibald, H. G. Johnson, J. Johnston, D. E. W. Laidler, R. A. Mundell, and F. G. Pyatt. 1 The government budget restraint has also been recognized by Patinkin (1956, pp. 361-65), Hansen (1958, chap. iii), Musgrave (1959, chap. xxii), and Enthoven (1960, pp. 303-59, esp. pp. 315 ff.), among others. After this paper was accepted for publication, two related pieces of work came to my attention: Ritter (1955-56) and Ott and Ott (1965). Both employ the idea of a government budget restraint, but neither carries the analysis as far as is done here.

Agency Requests, Gubernatorial Support and Budget Success in State Legislatures *

Abstract: This is a study of the budget success of state administrative agencies. Although a number of recent studies provide valuable information about environmental influences on state and local government expenditures, relatively little is known about the factors that affect the budgets of individual administrative units. Existing studies typically focus on the state as the unit of analysis, and report findings about the correlates of state (or state plus local) government expenditures in total and by the major fields of education, highways, public welfare, health, hospitals et al. The United States Bureau of the Census provides an invaluable service for this scholarship by collecting state and local government data and ordering it into categories that permit state-to-state comparisons. When political scientists and economists rely exclusively on Census Bureau publications, however, they preclude an attack on certain aspects of the expenditure process. In order to report data by the comparable fields of education, highways, public welfare etc., the Bureau of the Census rearranges the expenditures made by individual state agencies. As a result we know little about the factors that affect the budgets of individual agencies. And because it is the agency's budget that is the focus of budget-making, we have no systematic information about many of the influences that might affect government expenditures. Chief among the unknowns are the influence of each agency's budget request in the expenditure process, and the support given to the agencies by the governor.

Teaching Effectiveness and Government Awards Study shows that publication and government awards are good indicators of ability in teaching undergraduates

Abstract: Three bodies of available data at Tufts University were used in determining whether there are meaningful relationships between teaching effectiveness, publication, and the receipt of government support. A search of the literature showed that virtually all comments in the popular literature and most references in professional journals suggest that publication and receipt of support for research somehow detract from teaching performance in the classroom. The empirical data of the Tufts study do not support these previous conclusions. The students rated as their best instructors those faculty members who had published articles and who had received or were receiving government support for research.

The House of Chiefs and the Political Development of Botswana

Abstract: A major problem encountered by the builders of many of the new states in Africa has been that of defining a satisfactory position for the traditional tribal authorities in a more integrated and democratic political system. In Botswana a solution has been sought not only at the level of local government, where much of the Chiefs' power has been transferred to elected district councils, but also at the national level, where a House of Chiefs has been created to advise Government and Parliament. This body merits examination as a constructive effort to synthesise indigenous and imported institutions, and to accommodate the interests and demands of the hereditary rulers and their more conservative subjects, who remain deeply rooted in the tribal structure, in a manner which is acceptable to the new elite and their supporters, who are eager to modernise quickly.

Motivation, Incentive Systems, and the Political Party Organization*

Abstract: Several different models of local political party organization can be found in the accumulating studies of American local politics. One model is typified by the research of Forthal, Gosnell, Kent, and Salter, and presents a picture of the party organization as attracting and disciplining workers through material incentives, non-ideological in its appeals, and oriented toward obtaining votes for securing or maintaining the party in political control of the government. An alternative model has been described in more recent research by Wilson, Hirschfield, and Carney. They portray the party activist as being more ideologically oriented, responding to ideological rather than material incentives, and seeking governmental reform or improved governmental services. Changes in the environment have been identified as the causal forces for this change in political party organizational style. For example, Greenstein points out that urban party machines developed to provide required services for which demand was generated by rapid urbanization, disorganized governmental structures, and the needs of recent immigrants. The research describing the material-incentive-motivated political machines was produced primarily during the 1920's and 1930's when the need for accommodation to urban problems of the type described existed to a greater degree than at present.The social characteristics of the activists as well as the political style of the two types of party organizations described in the professional and amateur models also differ. The professional model presents a party organization whose members are male, oriented toward material rewards or a career in government, and exhibit little concern for issues.

The Political Survival of Traditional Leadership

Abstract: Viewed from the higher echelons of government in the new nations, the rural leader is an insignificant individual who goes about managing his local affairs and carrying out—with varying degrees of success—the policies and hopes of the government. Viewed from below, from the inner recesses of the village, the leader is a man of authority; a man who has used wealth, heredity, or personal magnetism to gain a position of influence. As seen by nation builders and development experts, the rural leader is tacitly pointed to as the key to success. It is he who can mobilise the people. It is through him that more energy will be expended, more muscles used, and more attitudes changed. Conversely, it is the leader's lack of initiative that will entrench the status quo and doom the modernisation schemes before they begin.

Epidemiological Problems Associated With Studies of the Safety of Oral Contraceptives

Abstract: Most segments of American society agree that excessive and disproportionate population growth is a social, economic, and health threat, and there is a consensus, reflected in the stated policy of the federal government 1 that every family should have easy access to family planning information and services so that each may make an intelligent and uninhibited choice concerning the number of children desired. This consensus has increased the need for family planning services and efforts to develop improved techniques of contraception. New methods have been developed because the old ones are not suitable for all populations. It is difficult for a single method to satisfy all the criteria of the ideal contraceptive: efficacy, safety, reversibility, low cost, simplicity, and acceptability. Advances in reproductive biology supported and conducted by private foundations, industry, and the government have resulted in several unique and effective techniques in the last decade, the most noteworthy being oral

The Indian Minority of Zambia, Rhodesia, and Malawi

Abstract: instrument well suited to their needs if not to those of the private bankers. These same firms and their outport correspondents imported the raw materials for the early industrialists and exported their manufactures. Until we know more about such 'traditional' institutions, we shall have a most distorted picture of the credit world in which the early industrialists operated. Finally, would we not be helped by some systematic comparative study of the varying role of the state? One is immediately struck by the great range of circumstance and objectives in the relationship of government to the financial community: at the one extreme we find the limited horizons and naive sinking funds of the eighteenth century; at the other, the Russian state directing vast resources towards capital building by depositing significant amounts of government funds in banks specializing in long-term loans to heavy industry. There are profound qualitative differences here not brought out by just counting banking offices. These comments, reflections and suggestions of areas for further work should not confuse the reader about the great merit of the work of Professor Cameron and his collaborators. The conception of this volume is intelligent, imaginative, even daring: its shortcomings are measures of its ambitions. All persons interested in planning multi-lateral international and inter-temporal comparative studies in economic or social history will do well to start by considering this volume carefully and pondering the methodological problems it raises.